Eastern Iowa · June 24, 2230 · Parallel scene
Marta Yoder found the horse in the mill yard and her nephew beside it, holding a document as if paper had recently learned to bite.
“You said bring the sacks,” she told him.
“I brought them.”
“Where?”
“They're filling them.”
“Why have they got your horse?”
He looked toward the office. That was where the better answer had gone.
The mill stood beside an eastern Iowa rail spur that had kept its old name through three rebuilding agreements. Some wagons arrived behind animals, some behind motors, and some on the last good wheels of an ambition to own a motor. Marta had no theological interest in the neighbors' axles. Her Mennonite congregation had its own arguments about what to borrow, what to own and what kinds of debt made the distinctions meaningless.
Today she had come for flour.
The mill took their settlement's delivery letter because its grain wagons had met the agreed weights for years. Marta had signed the latest letter herself. She had also written the quantity her sister's household could collect while a late grain cart was still on the road. The agreement was between the mill and the named guarantors. It was not a permission to take any animal that happened to arrive with the paper.
Jonas, her nephew, had signed something else.
He was twenty-two and had recently decided to stop being treated as the family's spare boy. The decision had produced useful results. He repaired his own harness, negotiated two paid deliveries and asked Marta for advice only after refusing it would become conspicuous.
The horse was his. That had been important when he bought her.
At the office a mill clerk unfolded the second document. The mill had received a message that the grain cart would be delayed beyond the settlement's expected arrival. It would still advance the flour, but wanted additional security until delivery. Jonas had offered the horse's use for two days if the grain did not arrive by tomorrow noon.
Not ownership. The distinction was underlined.
“What use?” Marta asked.
“Hauling,” said the clerk.
“What weight? Whose harness? Who feeds her? Who pays if she comes back lame?”
The clerk found that the underlining had not covered these matters.
Jonas flushed. “They know horses.”
“So do people who work them badly.”
The clerk objected, reasonably, that the mill's team received good care. Marta apologized for the implication and did not withdraw the questions.
Outside, the horse shifted her weight. Her name was Clem, although she had been bought as Clementine. Jonas said she had reduced the name herself by ignoring the longer version.
The flour mattered. Marta's sister fed six people and supplied bread to a repair crew. Waiting for the grain meant buying a little flour at a worse price, probably from the same mill. The mill's caution mattered too. Its keeper had advanced against several promises this month and had already paid the grinding hands. A good name could not be fed into the machinery instead of grain.
Marta understood every sentence. She would have preferred one foolish person whom she could correct and leave behind.
She asked to see the delay message. A rail transfer bench reported that the settlement's cart had not made the preceding connection. It did not say the wagon was damaged or the grain lost. It also did not promise when either would reach the mill. The local relay clerk had copied the message that morning; nobody in this office had spoken directly with the driver.
“Then the horse is for not knowing,” Marta said.
“The horse is for what we have to pay while we don't know,” the mill keeper answered from the door.
His name was Emmett. He had flour on the sleeve of his good coat because he put it on whenever a dispute began and forgot to take it off when work resumed.
Marta had known him for twelve years. She did not know whether his present account could survive another wait. Friendship had spared them that question until now.
Jonas took back the paper. “I made the offer. You can't just undo it.”
“I can say you didn't make it for me.”
“You sent me.”
“With one letter.”
“You always send me with one thing and expect me to come back with the whole day managed.”
The clerk looked down. Emmett went outside to ask that the sack filling pause. Marta and Jonas remained beside the desk with a space opening between them large enough for several years.
He was right. When her husband was ill she had needed errands done without another question arriving at the bed. Jonas had become very good at bringing solutions home. After the illness ended she had kept handing him the parts of her life that did not fit in the morning.
“I should have told you where your authority stopped,” she said.
“You never tell me where it starts.”
There was more in that than flour. She could not settle it in a mill office and began, for once, by not trying.
When Emmett returned, Jonas asked for a smaller advance. Enough flour for household food and the next day's bread, not the full order. Marta asked what amount the existing letter would support without the horse. Emmett named a quantity. It was below the first and above nothing.
They worked backward from it. Her sister would lose part of a baking order. Marta could buy another small sack from her own money, but not call it a congregation's guarantee. Jonas could offer one paid hauling job at his ordinary terms once this delivery was finished. He would not pledge Clem's unspecified future use.
Emmett accepted the reduced flour order. He crossed out the horse paper in front of Jonas and gave it back. No one called that generosity; the mill was retaining less risk and selling less flour. Its next milling run would also be smaller.
Marta wrote a new letter describing only the altered order. She did not enlarge the settlement's guarantee because her nephew had become angry in public. Her fellow guarantors deserved their own voices.
In the yard, Jonas loaded the sacks they could actually take. Clem ignored both the restored freedom of her labor and the argument that had secured it. She wanted the nosebag.
Marta held it while Jonas checked the lashings.
“I can tell your mother about the missing flour,” she said.
“I'll tell her.”
“Then I'll tell the guarantors about the letter.”
He nodded. This was not quite forgiveness. It was a division of work he had helped choose.
Before leaving, he folded the canceled horse paper into his pocket. Marta nearly told him there was no use keeping it. Then she picked up the smaller delivery letter and climbed onto the wagon without arranging the rest of his afternoon.